A leading scientist involved in the climategate scandal received over half a million dollars in federal economic stimulus funds from the Obama Administration last Summer, it has been revealed.

Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University, currently under investigation by the institution itself for his role in massaging climate data[2] and hijacking the peer review process[3] to advance the myth of anthropogenic global warming, was awarded a grant of $541,184 by the government in June 2009.

Mann, the creator of the now infamously discredited Hockey Stick Graph, landed money that came directly from the U.S. Treasury’s economic stimulus package, reveals the Washington free-market think-tank group The National Center For Public Policy Research (NCPPR).

The official justification for the grant, authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was labeled as “climate change research”.

“It’s outrageous that economic stimulus money is being used to support research conducted by Michael Mann at the very time he’s under investigation by Penn State and is one of the key figures in the international Climategate scandal. Penn State should immediately return these funds to the U.S. Treasury,” said Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project.

“It’s no wonder that Obama’s stimulus plan is failing to produce jobs. Taxpayer dollars aren’t being used in the ways most likely to spur job creation. The stimulus was not sold to the public as a way to reward a loyalist in the climate change debate. Nor was the stimulus sold as a way to promote the Obama Administration’s position on the global warming theory…As is often the case, political considerations corrupt the distribution of government funds,” said Deneen Borelli, a fellow with the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network.

The mainstream media, once again, remains completely silent on the matter as the vast majority did throughout the climategate controversy.

Warming alarmists are sure to point to the fact that NCPPR has a vested interest, being a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition, whose object is described as “dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis”.

In 25 years of operation, NCPPR has received about $280,000 from ExxonMobil and presently receives about one half of one percent of its funding from the company.

However, as we have previously pointed out[9], the funding received by groups such as the NCPPR from companies like Exxonmobil pales in comparison to the gargantuan amounts, of mostly tax payer dollars, awarded to AGW proponents.

The leaked emails from the Hadley centre revealed that (now former) CRU chief Phil Jones received 55 endowments since 1990 from agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Energy to NATO, worth a total of £13,718,547, or approximately $22.6 million.

$19 million alone came between the years 2000 and 2006.

The London based intergovernmental organisation The Commonwealth Foundation[10] has called for an outside, independent investigation of Michael Mann and his involvement in climategate, a move that is further vindicated entirely by these latest revelations.